


Still Deciding If I'm Something Else

by killingmonsterswritingthings



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Wonderland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 01:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9576146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killingmonsterswritingthings/pseuds/killingmonsterswritingthings
Summary: Taako comes back from Wonderland a changed person. A person he doesn't want anyone else to meet. Except that's not how life works. At all. As usual.





	

**Author's Note:**

> listen, i'm sure there's probably a dozen of fics like this out there already but i _had to_ , you know?? i just had to.
> 
> lina did not discourage me, so here we are.

 

Taako hadn‘t been avoiding Kravitz, per se. It was just that at first they had been so busy debriefing and getting the Animus Bell destroyed, and then… Then had come the resting period. The healing. The processing.

It was worse this time. Much worse. The wounds healed, but no matter what Taako did, he never felt rested. He actually slept, even though elves didn‘t usually need to, but no amount of meditating or sleeping ever made him feel like he had before Wonderland. He would never be the same again.

He had removed the mirror in his room and locked away all his hand mirrors except one, which he used in the mornings to make sure the glamour he cast on himself was perfect and in place. But it was never quite right. Never the same. Not to him, anyway. He felt wrong.

And he didn‘t want Kravitz to see him like this.

It wasn’t as if he actually knew the guy. Like, really _knew_ him. They had been on one date and yeah, there had been something there. But Taako didn’t owe him anything.

Kravitz had tried to reach him several times but well, Taako wasn’t obligated to answer his Stone of Farspeech every time there was so much as a crackle in the line, was he?

  


  


  


He spent more time in bed than was necessary, really, but there was nothing for him to do and nowhere to go. And on the rare occasions that he did go out the glamour burnt up some of his magic, and a lot of energy, so he ended up spending even more time laying down afterwards.

Sometimes he wished he would have taken the bell’s offer of giving him back everything that he had lost – of shining and sounding bright again – and the guilt just made him suffer more.

  


One morning he shuffled out of his room, hungry and still so tired, always tired – but glamour fast in place in case one of the others was in the common area. Instead of Merle, whom he would have expect to still be there, Kravitz was sitting at their kitchen table.

Taako froze. For a moment he considered just turning around and going back to his room. He wasn’t dressed for this at all, sleep-shorts that had been Magnus’ once upon a time and oversized T-Shirt hanging from his body, but hunger and curiosity won out. He resigned himself to his fate.

“What are you doing here?”

He walked over to the kitchen counter, avoiding Kravitz’ glance.

“Angus called me.”

“Damn that little traitorous magic boy,” Taako swore. He knew he couldn’t stay angry at Angus. He knew he couldn’t stay angry at Kravitz, either.

“I was worried,” Kravitz said.

“Well,” Taako got out a cutting board, “now you’ve seen me and I’m _fine_ , so you can stop being worried.” He was going to make stir fry just to have something to do.

“Taako, please look at me.”

Taako turned around, a fake smile plastered on his face. “What’s up?”

“Angus told me what happened.”

“Angus doesn’t know shit about what happened.”

Kravitz hummed. “That may be true. Since no one knows exactly what happened but you. But I felt it, Taako.”

“Felt what?” Taako snapped.

“I felt the life drain from you. I was reaching out for you when it got bad. I almost had to...” He broke off.

“You almost had to come and collect me for the Astral Plane, huh?” Taako finished for him.

“I don’t know if I could have,” Kravitz admitted.

That admission sent Taako reeling. Suddenly the off-kilter feeling was even stronger. He hadn’t expected that. Damn Kravitz, always taking him by surprise.

“Show me,” Kravitz said.

Taako shook his head.

“Please, Taako,” Kravitz said. “I don’t like you for your looks,” Kravitz said, “even though you look great. You looked great then and I’m sure you look great now. I like you for your soul.” He pointed at Taako’s chest.

“I’m pretty sure that’s my heart, not my soul, my man,” Taako said wearily.

Kravitz shook his head and stepped closer. “No, your heart is here,” he said and put his hand over the fast-beating heart in Taako’s chest. “Your soul… is here.” He moved his hand to the middle of his chest and a little lower, not quite to the exact middle of his torso. A chill went through Taako. “I can feel it. I can see it. And it’s as bright as ever.”

“That’s funny,” Taako mumbled. “Because it doesn’t feel that way.”

“I know it doesn’t,” Kravitz said. “But I also know what it looked like in Wonderland. I can still sense the life and happiness draining from you.”

For a moment Taako wanted to just blurt it all out. That it hadn’t returned yet. That he was never going to get it back. But he bit his tongue and kept quiet, possibly for the first time in his life.

“You don’t know what it was like,” he said instead. “You have no idea… You have no idea what I look like now, or what I feel like.”

“No, I don’t,” Kravitz said. “Because you won’t show me. And you won’t tell me. But I know that your soul is still the same.”

They stared at each other for a while and Taako grit his teeth.

“Show me,” Kravitz repeated, much softer this time, but somehow just as insistent.

And Taako gave in. Gods, what was the point in all of this, anyway?

He dropped the glamour without a warning. Maybe the shock would make Kravitz go away.

Kravitz barely even blinked.

“I told you,” Taako said.

“You look… normal,” Kravitz said.

“Yeah,” Taako said. Because there was nothing else to say. He looked normal, to other people, to people who saw him for the first or maybe second time in their lives. But not to everyone else. Not to himself. He wasn’t ugly, but it was jarring nonetheless, and the loss was profound.

“You know you still look the same to me, right?” Kravitz asked.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Taako shot back, quickly conjuring the glamour back up. “The difference is pretty obvious...”

“No, I mean...” Kravitz sighed. “Your soul is still the same. I can tell what you lost, but at the core, you still look the same to me.”

“Don’t give me that ‘appearances don’t matter’ crap.”

“You know what I really look like,” Kravitz said. He turned into his skeletal form, just to prove the point.

Taako scoffed. “Yeah, but that’s still cool and sexy, you know?”

“To you maybe.” Kravitz had to laugh. “Most everyone else thinks it’s scary and off-putting. You thought so too, at first. Remember?”

And okay, that was true, Taako had been a bit put off by Kravitz’ skull at first, but hey, he had tried masking it as a joke. Who was he to know if this wasn’t the same, right here? Kravitz fucking with him for amusement.

“The point is,” Kravitz said, oblivious to Taako’s thoughts, “that I have an unlimited amount of different appearances, and I’m the same in all of them. And so are you. You’re the still the same person and still the same soul.”

“That’s whack.” That was the only thing Taako could think of.

Kravitz laughed. “That’s life.”

“And death,” Taako added.

“If that’s how you want to look at it.” Kravitz shrugged.

Taako looked at him, but there was no trace of a lie in his face, and by now Taako could read people quite well. Maybe he _was_ being serious.

It wouldn’t solve all of his problems, for sure, but he couldn’t deny that he felt a little lighter. He had been afraid. At least with the guys he knew they had to work with him for some more time, until all of this was cleared up. They were bound to him. Kravitz had no such obligations. He could walk away at any moment, only to return when it was finally time to collect Taako’s soul for the astral plane.

But if Kravitz could still look at him, maybe other people could, too. It was a relief.

Maybe it didn’t matter that Taako couldn’t look at himself, at the moment.

Kravitz brushed some hair out of Taako’s face and smiled. “You were going to make food?”

Taako groaned and looked at the cutting board. Another thing he would have to deal with eventually. “Nah,” he said. “You wanna go out for lunch?”

Kravitz slightly tilted his head, as if he knew exactly what Taako was doing, but he didn’t object. “Sure. As long as it’s not the chug’n’squeeze.”

“They don’t serve food, sweetheart,” Taako said, “and as much as I love wine, it’s not a full meal.” Honestly, what did people think of him? He knew how to feed people, even if he didn’t do it quite as much anymore – or at all. He did still know how to construct a proper meal.

“Fair point.”

Taako went to put away the cutting board again and then looked down at himself. “Guess I should change into something I can go out in...”

Kravitz was watching him with a smile. “I guess,” he echoed. So Taako turned and was about to head back to his room, when a cold hand closed around his wrist. “Hold up.”

“What’s up, ice cube?”

Kravitz’ hand let go of his arm and then both his hands settled on Taako’s waist. “I just wanted to give you this.” Taako automatically leaned into the touch. For a brief moment he remembered that the last time he had let someone touch him had been just after Wonderland, when Magnus had helped him into the travel sphere. But the trace of the memory was gone just as fast, wiped away by Kravitz’ lips on his. Taako sighed into the kiss. Yeah, this was alright.

They stayed like this for a moment and Taako leaned his forehead against Kravitz. His cold skin was soothing, so entirely different from the suffocating warmth of the bed Taako had spent so many hours in recently.

“You know you’re perfect like this, right?”

The corner of Taako’s mouth twitched. “You know, I might just believe you.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> i hope we all enjoyed that :P
> 
>  _please_ come yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/luffylaws) or [tumblr](https://luffylaws.tumblr.com)!
> 
> the title is from [first things first](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ft30ZS8Ii4) by neon trees bc i recently marathoned dirk gently. and uh, taakitz song, okay. it's a total taakitz song.


End file.
